4 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Washington Black' Is a Defiantly Joyful Fable
As the opening scenes of 'Washington Black' come into view, the narrator Sterling K. Brown tells viewers that what's about to unfold is 'the story of a boy brave enough to change the world.'
In the sweeping 19th-century adventure that follows, the wide-eyed, kindhearted George Washington Black, a.k.a. Wash, escapes the Barbados sugar plantation where he has been enslaved since birth, finds freedom and romance in Canada and uses his keen intellect to make marvelous scientific breakthroughs.
The eight-part series, based on Esi Edugyan's acclaimed 2018 novel of the same name, debuts Wednesday on Hulu.
As the saga bounces back and forth in time, Wash (played by Eddie Karanja) as a boy and by Ernest Kingsley Jr. as a young man) hones his prodigious artistic talents with help from Christopher Wilde (Tom Ellis), a white scientist who facilitates the boy's escape from bondage. Wash learns crucial lessons about the world — and his socially precarious place in it — as he soars through the air in a fantastical flying machine, sails the Caribbean Sea with pirates, rides a dog sled through the Arctic tundra and dodges a relentless bounty hunter hired by his former enslaver.
Brown's production company, Indian Meadows Productions, secured the rights to the novel in 2019 and the show's creator, Selwyn Seyfu Hinds, set about transforming the transcontinental coming-of-age tale for the screen.
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